In squats by the Serbian border, young men trying to enter the EU live in dangerous limbo
Just 300 metres from the border crossing between Serbia and Hungary, a gateway to the European Union, around 30 men are standing in the middle of a field. It’s late January and the temperature is near zero. Nearby are several abandoned buildings where they are temporarily living. An open fire, made of wood, tires, and plastic, serves as the only source of warmth, but it creates heavy and poisonous air inside the squat. They are waiting for drinking water, food, and warm clothes to be distributed by a group of volunteers – the only people helping them to survive the winter.
These men, most of them from Pakistan and Afghanistan, were pushed from their homes by ongoing conflicts and poor economic conditions. They are trying to cross the Balkan corridor to seek asylum in the EU, but got trapped in Serbia when Hungary and Croatia erected razor wire fences on their borders in 2015. For many, this journey has been part of their life for several years, and has involved multiple deportations and restarted attempts at making it to the EU.
As part of my PhD research, I spent a total of five weeks between May 2017 and January 2018 in seven transit squats and three state-run camps in Serbia.
The chances of making a legal border crossing from Serbia to the EU countries of Hungary or Croatia are getting slimmer. The legal border crossing points into Hungary currently accept only two to six people per working day. The “lucky” ones are mainly families with children, who often pay the Serbian state authorities €3,000 per family to appear on top of highly corrupted “waiting lists” which stipulate who gets access and whose asylum claim will be assessed. This makes single men the most disadvantaged and vulnerable group in such transit camps, and they often have to rely on their own support networks, deemed illegal by Serbian authorities.
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